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American Morning

Interview With Michael Isikoff

Aired June 02, 2003 - 09:16   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Was the White House right about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction? More than 11 weeks have passed without conclusive evidence. Now, as the questions get louder, coalition members are vehemently defending their stance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: The idea that we doctored intelligence reports in order to invent some notion about a 45 minute capability of delivering weapons of mass destruction, the idea that we doctored such intelligence is completely and totally false. Every single piece of intelligence that we presented was cleared very properly by the joint intelligence committee.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination. Iraq used these weapons against Iran in the late '80s. Iraq used such weapons against its own people in the late '80s. When the Gulf War was over in 1991, we found such weapons and destroyed some of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Let's go ahead and bring in "Newsweek's" Michael Isikoff. The magazine reporting that before the war, hard evidence was lacking about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction.

He's joining us from Washington this morning.

Michael, good morning.

Good to have you with us.

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, "NEWSWEEK": Good morning.

KAGAN: Maybe not going so far as doctoring evidence, as we heard Tony Blair defending himself there, but you do write or there is this piece in "Newsweek" talking about a lack of hard evidence, a lack of human intelligence and instead the case being made on a assumptions.

ISIKOFF: Correct. I mean what is clear is not that people deliberately doctored evidence or falsified matters, but there were a lot of dissents within the U.S. intelligence community about some of the things the president and top administration officials were saying. And those dissents were not communicated, certainly to the American people or to the world.

In this piece, we quote a, one top State Department analyst on WM -- Iraqi WMD, Greg Thielmann, on the record. He's the first person to go on the record talking about the internal discussions -- he's recently resigned from the State Department -- says that the State Department Office of Intelligence and Research strongly dissented on claims that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program. It could find no reliable evidence that that happened. They wrote lengthy reports to Secretary of State Powell on that. They questioned the argument that aluminum tube purchases were being used for the Iraqi nuclear program and they strongly dissented on the what we now know to be forged Niger documents that suggested Iraq was purchasing uranium from the African country of Niger. We now know those documents to be forged and yet references to them made their way into the president's State of the Union.

So there's a lot of questioning about what, about the internal discussions prior to the administration making its -- or while the administration was making its claim about Iraqi WMD programs.

KAGAN: Well, let's talk about this communication and these internal discussions. There is a concern, and this has been voiced during the war and currently, that the CIA not able to tell the White House and President Bush what they wanted to hear.

ISIKOFF: Right. I mean look, you had, you clearly had administration officials with a policy agenda about Iraq. And you had an intelligence community that is supposed to be playing the honest broker, supposed to be accurately reflecting what the intelligence is.

In this case, as is so often the case, the intelligence was ambiguous. It was ambiguous on Iraqi ties to al Qaeda and it was certainly ambiguous on whether Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program. It also was, perhaps, a little more ambiguous on chemical and biological warfare, weapons, as well. And the question is whether the intelligence reports to the administration reflected, fully reflected that ambiguity. That's one set of questions. And the second set of questions is whether what the president, Secretary of State Powell and other administration officials said publicly reflected the ambiguous nature of the intelligence that they got from the community.

KAGAN: Michael, I want to broaden this discussion out a little bit even in, past the White House. In the same week that you're running this piece, your own "Newsweek" poll shows that 72 percent of Americans do believe that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction before the war started.

ISIKOFF: Yes, and look, Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction is an elastic term. It reflects lots of things, and certainly the discovery of the biological weapons labs tends to support the general idea that certainly Iraq had a weapon -- a chemical and biological weapons program. We know that. There isn't much doubt about it.

What state it was in at the time that the war was launched and whether they had weapons ready to fire and actually stockpiles ready to use is, that's the unanswered question at this point.

I think the -- you can take a broad step back and say whether Iraq presented the kind of imminent threat that was used to justify the war, I think, is the question on the table and is the question that's going to be investigated, both by Congress and internally inspectors general of the CIA and State Department that have been asked to look into these matters.

KAGAN: They will be looking at it and it will lead to more questions about future conflicts and U.S. credibility. But those will have to be questions for another time.

Michael Isikoff from "Newsweek," thanks so much.

ISIKOFF: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired June 2, 2003 - 09:16   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Was the White House right about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction? More than 11 weeks have passed without conclusive evidence. Now, as the questions get louder, coalition members are vehemently defending their stance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: The idea that we doctored intelligence reports in order to invent some notion about a 45 minute capability of delivering weapons of mass destruction, the idea that we doctored such intelligence is completely and totally false. Every single piece of intelligence that we presented was cleared very properly by the joint intelligence committee.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination. Iraq used these weapons against Iran in the late '80s. Iraq used such weapons against its own people in the late '80s. When the Gulf War was over in 1991, we found such weapons and destroyed some of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Let's go ahead and bring in "Newsweek's" Michael Isikoff. The magazine reporting that before the war, hard evidence was lacking about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction.

He's joining us from Washington this morning.

Michael, good morning.

Good to have you with us.

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, "NEWSWEEK": Good morning.

KAGAN: Maybe not going so far as doctoring evidence, as we heard Tony Blair defending himself there, but you do write or there is this piece in "Newsweek" talking about a lack of hard evidence, a lack of human intelligence and instead the case being made on a assumptions.

ISIKOFF: Correct. I mean what is clear is not that people deliberately doctored evidence or falsified matters, but there were a lot of dissents within the U.S. intelligence community about some of the things the president and top administration officials were saying. And those dissents were not communicated, certainly to the American people or to the world.

In this piece, we quote a, one top State Department analyst on WM -- Iraqi WMD, Greg Thielmann, on the record. He's the first person to go on the record talking about the internal discussions -- he's recently resigned from the State Department -- says that the State Department Office of Intelligence and Research strongly dissented on claims that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program. It could find no reliable evidence that that happened. They wrote lengthy reports to Secretary of State Powell on that. They questioned the argument that aluminum tube purchases were being used for the Iraqi nuclear program and they strongly dissented on the what we now know to be forged Niger documents that suggested Iraq was purchasing uranium from the African country of Niger. We now know those documents to be forged and yet references to them made their way into the president's State of the Union.

So there's a lot of questioning about what, about the internal discussions prior to the administration making its -- or while the administration was making its claim about Iraqi WMD programs.

KAGAN: Well, let's talk about this communication and these internal discussions. There is a concern, and this has been voiced during the war and currently, that the CIA not able to tell the White House and President Bush what they wanted to hear.

ISIKOFF: Right. I mean look, you had, you clearly had administration officials with a policy agenda about Iraq. And you had an intelligence community that is supposed to be playing the honest broker, supposed to be accurately reflecting what the intelligence is.

In this case, as is so often the case, the intelligence was ambiguous. It was ambiguous on Iraqi ties to al Qaeda and it was certainly ambiguous on whether Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program. It also was, perhaps, a little more ambiguous on chemical and biological warfare, weapons, as well. And the question is whether the intelligence reports to the administration reflected, fully reflected that ambiguity. That's one set of questions. And the second set of questions is whether what the president, Secretary of State Powell and other administration officials said publicly reflected the ambiguous nature of the intelligence that they got from the community.

KAGAN: Michael, I want to broaden this discussion out a little bit even in, past the White House. In the same week that you're running this piece, your own "Newsweek" poll shows that 72 percent of Americans do believe that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction before the war started.

ISIKOFF: Yes, and look, Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction is an elastic term. It reflects lots of things, and certainly the discovery of the biological weapons labs tends to support the general idea that certainly Iraq had a weapon -- a chemical and biological weapons program. We know that. There isn't much doubt about it.

What state it was in at the time that the war was launched and whether they had weapons ready to fire and actually stockpiles ready to use is, that's the unanswered question at this point.

I think the -- you can take a broad step back and say whether Iraq presented the kind of imminent threat that was used to justify the war, I think, is the question on the table and is the question that's going to be investigated, both by Congress and internally inspectors general of the CIA and State Department that have been asked to look into these matters.

KAGAN: They will be looking at it and it will lead to more questions about future conflicts and U.S. credibility. But those will have to be questions for another time.

Michael Isikoff from "Newsweek," thanks so much.

ISIKOFF: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com